


Cherry Boys

by EntreNous



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Humor, M/M, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-01
Updated: 2006-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cherry Slushee drinking demographic is big in Sunnydale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherry Boys

What Xander liked best about the people in Sunnydale was their completely unfounded optimism.

Sure, a lesser people would pull up stakes and move when their neighbors succumbed to barbeque fork accidents and wild animal attacks. But no, the citizens of Sunnydale not only stayed put, they started up businesses that were as likely to be destroyed by a diligent slayer slamming a demon through a glass display case as by the local undead population.

Which is why whenever the corner convenience store closed, Xander shrugged and waited for the next one to reopen days later in the same space. Invariably there would be a sad plastic banner flapping outside the building, saying something like _Under New Menegement_ or _Best Cofee in Town!_ , but inside, oh, inside were the exact same frozen burritos, stale donuts, hot dogs, and cherry Slushees that he’d raised himself on.

Except not this time.

“How can you not have cherry?” Xander asked the girl behind the counter. “It’s the most popular of all the Slushee flavors. You practically just opened, the machine is brand new -- what’s the problem?”

The girl didn’t even look up from the pages of her magazine, just pointed up at the sign that said, “No Cherrie Sorry!!!” in uneven block letters.

“Are you just _out_?” Xander asked. “I mean, you’ve ordered more, right? Because the cherry Slushee drinking demographic is big here.”

She coughed, belatedly covering her mouth when she was mostly done hacking.

“Big,” Xander told her.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” a voice said as four men -- scratch that, four vampires, because one of them was shaking off his game face -- tripped off the happy little electronic ding-dong customer bell.

“Damn,” Xander said under his breath. Buffy had stopped patrolling the convenience stores two weeks ago when she’d gotten a ticket for loitering at the downtown 7-11. “And it’s not like I don’t care,” she told Xander the next day on the phone. “But I get lots of blood and guts spattered on me, and if I can’t afford to buy new clothes on a regular basis because of those tickets, well --”

“Plus there’s supporting the local economy,” Xander pointed out. “With the shopping.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Buffy said, apparently relieved that he understood. “I’ll still go to the 24-hour stores when I want snacks, though. And if there are vampires there plotting some kind of bizarre ritual or looking at the dirty magazines, you know that nobody is going to be happier to stake them than me.”

All of that had sounded reasonable at the time. But of course now all he could think was how very unlikely it would be that Buffy would get a hankering for Swedish Fish or CornNuts while patrolling and stop by to save the day. And the day would need saving, no question, because “what do we have here?” was an inevitable verbal prelude to bitey badness.

“Looks like a brand new Slushee machine,” one of the other vampires answered the first’s question.

Xander tried not to choke on his own spit. The vampires were here for snacks and beverages?

“Wasn’t I just saying how I wanted a Slushee?” the leader of the pack exclaimed. “Right about when we were sucking old man Anderson dry, I was saying, a Slushee would be awesome.”

“And nachos,” one of his goons reminded him.

“Nachos would be the _best_ ,” the leader replied.

“Do you have nachos tonight?” another vampire asked.

The girl at the counter yawned and pointed towards the Make-Your-Own-Nachos! bar at the back of the store. “Help yourself.”

“Sometimes they run out of nachos,” one of the vampires confided to another. The group of them moved off, chattering, as Xander attempted to catch his breath.

“Okay, those guys?” Xander said to the girl in a low voice. “They’re up to no good.”

“You going to pay for that cookie?” the girl asked him, and Xander looked down to realize that, yes, he had grabbed and crumbled a Saran-Wrapped Mrs. Fields cookie right about when the spike of fear had roiled through his body.

“Fine, okay,” he whispered as he dug through his pockets for change. “But right now you’ve got bigger problems.”

“With those guys?” she asked, looking over his shoulder as the nachos-making turned into a goopy fake cheese fight.

Just then the happy little electronic ding-dong customer bell went off again, and Xander cast a hopeful look over his shoulder. “Spike!” he yelped when he saw who was coming.

Spike took another step in and heaved a sigh. “Can’t even go buy a pack of smokes without running into one of you lot, can I?”

“Get over here,” Xander hissed at him.

Spike snorted and took another step in. “You could at least say please.”

There wasn’t enough time to bang his head against the counter in frustration. But Xander did it anyway. “ _Please_!”

Spike waltzed over. The vampires in the back were louder now, especially since one of them had eaten a handful of jalapenos on a dare and proved that spicy foods could set someone’s mouth afire even when his heart was black and shriveled.

“Those guys, they’re vampires,” Xander told him frantically, trying to be casual in his gesture at the group.

“What, you want a prize for finding that out?” Spike asked him.

“No,” Xander answered. “I want you to help me get this girl out of here and --”

“If you want to get me out of here, my shift ends at midnight,” the girl said. She was all smiles now, twisting a piece of hair around her finger as she leaned towards Spike and cracked her gum enticingly.

Spike smirked and looked her over. “Does it now?”

“Doesn’t anyone care about the fact that we’re trapped in a store with four bloodthirsty vampires who will stop at nothing until they’ve left us for dead?” Xander blurted out.

There was a moment of silence. Then the four vampires shifted into game face and charged the front of the store.

“Oh, hell,” Spike muttered as he shoved Xander over the counter and vaulted after him.

“You have a problem with vampires, asshole?” one of the vampires shouted.

“You just had to call us out, didn’t you?” another one taunted.

The girl smacked her hand under the counter a few times before she hit a big red button. It triggered a creaking sound, and then a plastic shield came down between them and the rest of the store. One of the vampires almost got his fingers caught just as the edge met the counter, and banged against the plastic for a moment before snarling at them and moving back to consult the others.

“Funny how they were fine until you pointed out the whole vampire thing,” Spike said as he sat down cross-legged. He took the girl’s magazine from her clenched fist and started to page through it.

“I guess they don’t like being singled out,” Xander said as he cringed instinctively to avoid the _splotch!_ of hot fake cheese hitting the plastic wall. “But they wouldn’t have been _fine_ , and both you and I know it.”

“God,” the girl huffed. “What is your damage? Those guys come in here every night, and I’ve never had a problem with them until you came along.”

“They’re vampires!” Xander told her.

Another _splotch!_ of cheese was hurled at the counter, this time smacking the holes through which customers were supposed to talk when the wall was down. Some of it landed in the girl’s hair.

“They buy Jiffy Pop and pay in dollar bills instead of change!” the girl protested. She looked like she was getting ready to burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” Xander said. He wiped at the cheese with a stack of coupons, but only succeeded in mushing it into her hair. “Wait a minute, I mean, no! I’m not sorry. Maybe they’re . . .”

“Good customers,” Spike said with a roll of his eyes. “Who probably like to keep a low profile when they’re not looking to feed.”

Xander shook his finger at both of them. He had the high ground here, and he wasn’t about to relinquish it even if the three of them were squatting behind the counter. “They might be good customers for you, or upstanding citizens when they’re tooling around town, but when they’re hungry and not noshing on chili dogs, they _kill people_ for their blood!”

The girl glared at Xander. “So how do we get rid of them?” The added words _and you_ were just understood.

“I don’t know yet,” he answered. “Got any stakes?”

She blinked. “Got any _what_?”

Spike dropped the magazine and looked around. “Could throw things at them till they get annoyed and leave.”

“Like that would work,” Xander scoffed.

“We’ll start with the hot pretzels,” the girl said in a determined voice.

“How do we get the shield…?” Xander let the question dangle when Spike slammed against the plastic wall, knocking it over to lean against the aisle openings and creating a temporary barricade between them and the vampires.

The vampires seemed to understand the battle tactics already, because they crouched behind the Nachos bar and started their own assault.

It was a hell of a fight. The clerk, Xander, and Spike had the advantage at first, because the pretzels had been sitting out for too long and were hard, heavy missiles. The all-vampire team threw fistfuls of nacho chips, and though the yellow corn rounds might have been sharp around the edges originally, they didn’t make much of an impact since they were already soggy with cheese.

But then the gang of vampires started pulling out the big guns, throwing bags of flour and heavy giant containers of hot chocolate.

“The Slushees,” Xander said suddenly. He turned towards the machine and filling up a bunch of Mega Cups in succession.

“Good, yeah, get ‘em cold and wet. They’ll hate that,” Spike said. He sounded only partly sarcastic.

“Okay.” Xander stepped forward, his arms full of cups overflowing with syrupy contents. Spike wordlessly took half of them, and they prepared to fling.

The girl was holding her own with a steady stream of tins of chewing tobacco and buckets of Slim Jims when Spike and Xander launched their second-wave attack. She started when Xander lobbed a grape Slushee past her, but then gave him a nod, turned back and kept up the charge.

“Hey!” one of the vampires shouted indignantly as he was hit full in the face with a sour apple green Slushee. The others swore or reeled in anger as they were similarly bombarded with the frozen treats.

“Keep ‘em coming,” Spike yelled as the vampires started to slide and fall on the Slushee covered linoleum floor.

Xander ran to get another batch. He was so focused on refilling the cups that at first he didn’t notice what was coming out of the machine, but when a burst of red caught his eye, his head whipped towards the clerk.

“You said you were out of cherry,” he accused her.

“We are,” she said. Her eyes went wide. “Or we’d be better off if we were! Listen! Use the grape, use the rainbow twist nozzle, use the Coke flavored, but trust me, you don’t want to touch the cherry Slushees!”

“You’ve been holding out on me, lady,” Xander told her through gritted teeth. He muscled past her when she tried to block his way, sending her stumbling to the floor. “Cherry Slushee time,” he told Spike in a grim voice, and they turned to face their assailants . . .

Only to find that the Jiffy-pop eating crew really didn’t like being cold and wet. They had taken off, the store full of damaged goods and the absence of one Nacho Bar the only testament to their visit.

“Well, cheers,” Spike said, clunking Mega Cups with Xander.

“Back at you,” Xander said, raising his cup before starting to gulp down the cherry Slushee.

“No!” the girl yelled.

“You just don’t want to admit I was right about those . . .” Xander had downed half the Slushee already, and he could see Spike was busy snorfling his down. But he forgot what he had been about to say to the clerk girl, because . . . how come he’d never noticed how sexy Spike was before?

“Don’t drink any more of the cherry,” the girl pleaded with them as both Spike and Xander eyed one another and then tipped their cups up and downed what was left.

“It’s enchanted, the cherry flavor,” she insisted.

The Mega Cups hit the floor with a clatter.

“Enchanted?” Xander echoed. He didn’t feel enchanted. He just felt good. Really good. And Spike didn’t look enchanted. He looked good. Really good. In fact, Spike was looking at him right now like he agreed with every last bit of Xander’s internal monologue.

A beat passed before Spike and Xander slammed together and started to kiss. Xander backed up until the wall was supporting him, and Spike followed, pinning him with his body and growling.

“Oh god, oh yeah,” Xander breathed as Spike licked along the sinew of his neck and started doing this really creative full-body rub action. He clutched at Spike’s shoulders to yank him even closer.

“It’s the Slushee that’s making you feel this way,” the girl tried to tell them. “You won’t like it when it wears off!”

Xander didn’t bother to look at her; he just waved her off with one hand while clutching Spike’s hip with the other. Spike did glance back, but he must have had yellow eyes or something , because she burst out, “What is it with Tuesdays and vampires?” before high-tailing it out of the store.

“Don’t stop, oh god, don’t stop,” Xander pleaded with Spike, pulling him close again.

“Couldn’t stop now if I wanted,” Spike said in this low, dangerous voice that gave Xander the shivers right then and there.

Then it became harder to tell if he was shivering because they’d shimmied down the wall and onto the floor, and Spike was pressing his body down in all kinds of good ways. Spike licked at his lips until Xander parted them, and then started thrusting his tongue in with the same rhythm that his hips were twisting against Xander’s. Xander sucked on Spike’s tongue enthusiastically and bucked back. It was the best cherry Slushee flavored kiss he’d ever had.

“There’s not even anyone here,” Buffy’s voice called out in the store. _Ding Dong!_ went the happy little electronic customer bell.

“But someone was here,” Willow observed from the same area. “Just look at all that flour.”

“And beef jerky,” Buffy added. “Whatever went down, it was big.”

Xander could hear them dimly, but he was way more focused on kneading Spike’s firm ass and wriggling.

“Oh my god,” Buffy said distinctly. She’d gotten closer at some point.

There was a scuffle, and then Willow was doing her best to keep Xander back while Buffy brandished a stake in front of Spike’s chest.

“All right, what’s going on here?” Buffy asked. Her voice sounded calm even though she was in the kill position.

“You can’t stake him,” Xander said. “We just got started.”

“That’s new,” Willow said faintly.

“Spike and Xander trying to get it on like crazed weasels?” Buffy shot back. Spike attempted to move, and Buffy twirled the stake in mid-air with an “Uh, uh, uh!”

“No, the Slushee machine,” Willow said. She began to walk towards it, and Buffy took her eyes away from Spike to follow her.

As soon as their backs were turned, Spike dove for Xander. They went down again in a circuit of tongue-sucking lip-working groin-twisting goodness.

“So it’s a new Slushee machine,” Buffy was saying somewhere. “So what? I’m more worried about Spike convincing Xander that he does brake for vamps.”

“But it’s not one of the standard machines,” Willow argued. “There’s obviously something hinky about it.”

Buffy made an impatient noise. “Hello!” If Xander was a betting man, he’d have put good money on her pointing with lots of emphasis at him and Spike getting horizontal again. He tried to ignore the conversation as best he could, and pulled Spike’s red shirt off.

“The Slushee machine is obviously making them do this. It’s probably part of a plot. Or a demon-sponsored magic-charged trap,” Willow said as Spike pushed up Xander’s t-shirt and licked his torso.

“How do you know it’s not just a Joe Slushee machine, and that Xander and Spike are just secretly hot for each other?” Buffy asked.

“Because I did a report on the Slushee Corporation for the Sixth Grade Commerce Fair,” Willow said hotly. “I know every make and model that company has made, and this isn’t one of theirs, at least not in this dimension.”

“Okay, so maybe it is magic or something, but . . . oh god!”

There was another scuffle, and this time Buffy got Spike and Xander separated.

“Don’t you make that face at me, Xander Harris,” Willow told him.

Xander mustered all of his energy to resist whining at her, “But Spike was just starting to unzip my jeans!”

* * *

Hours later, Xander was drinking yet another glass of water that Willow had pressed on him.

“You’re lucky we came across the pattern of lust enchantments happening at the other convenience stores in the area,” Giles told him as Willow patted him on the arm. “Of course, we didn’t realize that the Slushee machines were the cause of the mischief until Willow pieced it all together. But fortunately Buffy arrived at the most critical moment.”

“She sure did,” Xander grumbled as he put the glass aside.

“In a few hours, you’ll be thanking us,” Willow said anxiously.

“I can’t wait that long,” Buffy said with a yawn. “I’ve got to get back to the dorms and get some sleep.”

“I’ll go with you, unless --” Willow peered at Xander.

“Go, go,” he said. “I can feel it wearing off now. I’ll be fine.”

“Fine as in not wanting to bone Spike any more?” Buffy asked cheerfully.

“He’s had a rough night,” Giles murmured, ushering Buffy and Willow to the door.

* * *

A short while later, Giles pulled up to the Harris household.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t rather just spend the night on my couch?” Giles asked him.

“Nah.” Xander kept his gaze fixed on the road. “I want to take a shower.”

“I imagine so, with all that syrup. Well.”

Xander waved as Giles pulled away from the curb. Then he started off towards the cemetery. When he banged open the crypt door, Spike was waiting on the other side.

“Yours worn off yet?” Xander asked.

“No,” Spike said in that shiver-inducing voice of his. "Yours?"

"Nope."

Neither said anything for a moment.

“God bless cherry Slushees,” Xander said reverently just before he and Spike slammed together and tumbled to the ground.


End file.
